Jump to content

How to play all Story Maps in Order as a Solo?


Picolo

Recommended Posts

Hey guys,

I have seen some videos with people completing all Story maps of Ark in order.
I would like to do the same on my own, but after trying it out for a bit I came to the conclusion that as a solo player with limited time (1-3 hours / day) it is pretty hard and gets boring.

I used official settings and just a few QoL Mods, as I still want to experience the game as it is ment to be played (officially)

Do you guys have any suggestion, which settings I can use to have a good experience that does not get boring?

I am a fairly experienced player, but I never played alone of tried to really "complete" all maps.

Thanks!

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

53 minutes ago, Picolo said:

I would like to do the same on my own, but after trying it out for a bit I came to the conclusion that as a solo player with limited time (1-3 hours / day) it is pretty hard and gets boring.

I used official settings and just a few QoL Mods, as I still want to experience the game as it is ment to be played (officially)

Do you guys have any suggestion, which settings I can use to have a good experience that does not get boring?

I am a fairly experienced player, but I never played alone of tried to really "complete" all maps.

My first suggestion is to look at the game a little differently. The game was meant to be played multiple different ways, and they meant single-player to be played differently than official servers. For example, WC meant for Official servers to be played without any mods at all, but they meant for single-player to allow mods, two very different ways of playing the game.

Having said that, I would start with thinking about the parts of the game that you don't enjoy and looking for mods or settings to change the game to suit your preferences.

* Do you dislike picking up poop by hand? Then look for a mod that automates poop collection.

* Do you dislike the amount of time it takes to breed and raise animals? Change the settings for breeding, gestation and growing up.

* Do you dislike the building mechanics, or the lack of interesting building pieces? Look for a mod that gives you better snap points and mechanics (like Structures Plus) or more building pieces for more interesting buildings (like Eco's mods or CKF Remastered).

 

The greatest strength of ARK in single-player is you can customized the game any way you want. It's your game, you get to decide how it "should" be played. The reason for the settings on the Official server is that WC expected that most people on Official would play in tribes, and even having a small tribe of 3-5 people is so much easier than playing solo on Official. But when playing solo WC expected that people would use mods and settings to make themselves happy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you just want the full story, read the explorer notes in order (on the wiki or whatever), its basically a book to read thru!(and a pretty descent story overall!) ... if you just play the bosses you will miss like 90+% of the actual story!

most bosses are done kinda boring with rex armies supported by a yuty & maybe a healer, soo if you make an army once you will basically be able to do most of them!
but because bosses are mostly "whistle attack the boss" plus dodging some stuff/surviving its not as exiting as one might think to play through!
it might be more "fun" to just "cheat" to/through the bosses to see the cuscenes/get the skins & co instead of wasting your time breeding boss armys in singleplayer, one might just spawn all in to speed things up!

personally i "cheated" through most bosses& achivements in singleplayer once, early on, because you get all the benefits of these unlocks on official aswell, like skins, hairstyles & co!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

My first suggestion is to look at the game a little differently. The game was meant to be played multiple different ways, and they meant single-player to be played differently than official servers. For example, WC meant for Official servers to be played without any mods at all, but they meant for single-player to allow mods, two very different ways of playing the game.

Having said that, I would start with thinking about the parts of the game that you don't enjoy and looking for mods or settings to change the game to suit your preferences.

* Do you dislike picking up poop by hand? Then look for a mod that automates poop collection.

* Do you dislike the amount of time it takes to breed and raise animals? Change the settings for breeding, gestation and growing up.

* Do you dislike the building mechanics, or the lack of interesting building pieces? Look for a mod that gives you better snap points and mechanics (like Structures Plus) or more building pieces for more interesting buildings (like Eco's mods or CKF Remastered).

 

The greatest strength of ARK in single-player is you can customized the game any way you want. It's your game, you get to decide how it "should" be played. The reason for the settings on the Official server is that WC expected that most people on Official would play in tribes, and even having a small tribe of 3-5 people is so much easier than playing solo on Official. But when playing solo WC expected that people would use mods and settings to make themselves happy.

Thank you for that!

I think I will look into some more mods.

The main thing that is boring to me is getting good blueprints at the moment...
I might be boosting my overall rates more to compensate for the missing tribemembers.

You are right, I was thinking about it like I was still playing on official servers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My perspective is a bit different having only played on console. I would say from the start to forget "official" settings if you wish to play solo. It would literally take years to play through everything. I would decide on group of settings and try to stick with it through the entire playthrough.  Personally, I think S+ settings are almost game ruining cheaty, but that is an option if the grind gets to be too much.

I would play through from The Island on and try to do The Island in the less cheaty way as possible as the rest of the maps in progression seem to make life easier...and it's like paying your dues, lol. I would play with difficulty set to 1 or 5 with the max difficulty box checked. I like having the "150" standard for most max level dinos. Anything less is ...less than you will eventually need and using the "180" standard for max level hurts my head. I would never touch any of the dino leveling stats...ever. The character...I like to have 2-2.5 harvesting and I like to have the taming speed at 2-3 times. That still gives the feel of a taming struggle without the 2 day commitment, lol.

Breeding dinos is the weak point for a single player with no S+.    I wish there was a way to increase the mutation success rate for single players. Mechanization via S+ seems to be the only way. The single player game settings make for an easier boss fight,  therefore not as much breeding is needed, but who wants to play a weaker game? Why should it be different for single players when the only thing you cannot buff is the mutation rate? Anyhow, I would plan to use certain dinos forward on other maps and not breed them every single time needed. It literally could mean saving weeks on each map...just breeding.

I'm still reconciling all my Ark experience into one playthrough after 3 years of struggle on 2 different consoles. I am glad i decided to scoot my dinos from map to map if needed. I ain't gettin' no younger, lol. All we need now on console is loot and eggs...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My personal preference is to play solo on a non-dedicated server. Way better functionality and greater capacity to apply customizations IMO. When not running time still stands still as per single player mode. Also, I like to load tames and special equipment into the transmitter then save the local profile txt file in it's own sub-folder on my personal game archive. If I ever want those dinos or items, I just drop a copy of the file over the current one. and the stuff is in my transmitter. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Picolo said:

I think I will look into some more mods.

The main thing that is boring to me is getting good blueprints at the moment...
I might be boosting my overall rates more to compensate for the missing tribemembers.

Included with the S+ (Structures Plus) mod is a "Blueprint Station". It this lets you take items that you find and convert them into blueprints, which is something we find is a great quality of life addition to our private server. It's really frustrating in the base game, or on an Official server, when you find a really great item but it's only one, and you can't find any blueprints, and the blueprint station solves this problem. Come to think of it, it includes a couple of different blueprint stations, one for saddles, armor & weapons and a blueprint table for structural items. Between these two methods of making blueprints you can also save engram points. Quite often you can find items that you haven't learned how to make yet, you throw them in the blueprint maker and *boom* you don't have to spend those engram points.

I'm sure there are other mods that do this (there might even be a separate mod that is only the blueprint station), we just happen to use the one included with S+.

 

On the question of boosting rates: This is a feature that's truly great for single-player (and even small private servers like mine). You're playing a game for fun, and setting your own rates is a major part of making the game as hard/easy as you want it to be.

Example #1: on our server we have taming rates set to x2.5. This means that we still need kibble for most tames if we went perfect tames (although some carnivores will max tame with just mutton), but it allows us to enjoy non-perfect taming with less time spent. For what it's worth, we start each new map with brand new characters because we enjoy the process of leveling up as we explore each new map. If you jump into a new map with a high level character and high level animals then you basically skip over the experience of getting to know that map on its own merits. We like the experience of learning the quirks of each map, exploring them with native species, figuring out how to get to the good harvesting locations, etc. If you jump on to map with a bunch of level 250+ animals that are breed and maybe imprinted it just makes you so OP that nothing on the new map is interesting or challenging, at that point you're not really beating the map because everything on the map is trivial to defeat. So on our server, we do a bunch of taming on every new map we go to. We want exploration and taming to be interesting and fun, and there's a limit to how much fun you can have taming the same animals over and over again on different maps. Using boosted taming rates lets us have a balance between taming new stuff on every map but also taming them quickly enough that it doesn't feel like a complete waste of time.

Example #2: When we start each new map, we set the breeding settings to vanilla rates, so it takes a lot of time and a lot of food if we want to do breeding at first. This prevents us from becoming too powerful too quickly. Basically we tame some low level animals and we breed a few of them to get some extra females for egg laying. This means that during the time when we're exploring and leveling we need to find and tame high level animals to be our mounts for exploring, leveling and hunting. Then, once we reach the point where we're going to do cave runs, we bump up the breeding settings a little bit so we can start our breeding lines and have some decent bred mounts for caves. Then when we're getting ready for boss fights we bump up the breeding settings by a lot so we can finish our breeding lines and get that final generation completed. Again, this matters to use because we start each map from scratch, so on every map we have to do a brand new breeding program, and breeding is a incredibly time consuming and boring.

If I was doing it on single-player what I personally would do is wait until boss fights and then bring over animals from previous maps. I would start each new map with a new character, tame new animals, maybe do a little breeding just to combine some good stats, and then at the end of the map I would import my bloodlines that I already bred on previous maps. But, of course, that's just me, it's your game and you should do it however makes it fun for you.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ahh the grind.....not sure what to tell ya man, its a part of the game no matter how you slice it.

The one absolute thing you can do to make it less of a drain is probably the baby part of it.....Granted, I think making a baby grow up in less than 10 minutes is kind of game breaking, as certain creatures need special foods to grow up successfully and this kinda skirts around that issue, but then again, I feel like raising babies to full maturity shouldn't take 3-10 real days. Because of that, Id say giving it a "gentle" bump is probably one of the best ways to advance the game play.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

20 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

If I was doing it on single-player what I personally would do is wait until boss fights and then bring over animals from previous maps. I would start each new map with a new character, tame new animals, maybe do a little breeding just to combine some good stats, and then at the end of the map I would import my bloodlines that I already bred on previous maps. But, of course, that's just me, it's your game and you should do it however makes it fun for you.

This. It allows a good "experience" of the unique new map - and then when you get fed up of the grind, import some "beasts" whereby you go quickly forward.
I have for a loooong time played pretty much like @DeHammer sez: With my own set of dedicated servers that I can run or drop as I like. Official experience for me was mostly on Small Tribes servers which I enjoyed immensely. I therefore run my servers at Small Tribes rates - with the exception that I have boosted breeding stuff a bit (like twice to what official will offer).
But to sit and breed on EACH new map is not something I have the time or the inclination for. So - yeah - go play the map, maybe as some peeps have said until you are OK to do the artifact fetching, and then bring in the big guns.
It is to your choice. Enjoy the game. Tame stuff. Build bases. Explore the map. Whack the boss. Just ENJOY the game :)

Last thought I have is that Ark with real people playing in it is way more fun that a single player experience. I started my "cluster" pretty much for me and my kids to play on. But over time I had a good bunch of peeps on the cluster. And it was great fun. Over time the kids have moved on to Tarkov or other twitch type games, and my geography (or rather my government) has messed up electric supply to the point where I cannot run a stable server anymore. But while it lasted it was GREAT fun, and is really worth a look. A dedicated server or cluster is YOUR server and has all the perks of single player along with the bonus of friends / enemies playing with you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So mine will be recommendations from the other end of the spectrum. I recommend setting rates at official level... at the time the map released. That's around 0.25 for Island and Scorched I think, would appreciate correction if needed.

That's for gathering and taming. XP is different; they've put the sharpness of the XP curve so high that you level up to about 50 while just farting around in base then hit a brick wall after. So maybe 0.1 until 50ish then 2x or whatever. I've literally leveled up while my character was still waking up on the beach, it's a joke - at our expense.

Breeding is also different, it's not built for solo at all. I left mine at 0.25 but modded out the baby feeding aspect.

I'd also recommend having a different character per map. It makes little sense to skip all the progression game play they painstakingly built into each map. Roaming Scorched with Wolves and the camel guy, Aberration with Ravagers and Aquatic Shrooms... Just cheat in the previous ascension when necessary.

And remember that it doesn't matter at all how long it takes to finish... as long as you're having fun when logged on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I myself want to do this aswell (just waiting on that dang new cutscene update...when is it coming Wild Card?!? I can't find any info on it!) I'm not sure if you are using custom maps, but if you aren't, I would start. Breeding is easier when it doesn't take 2 hours to only find a 120 rex. If you feel like custom maps are cheating, then I recommend doing what I do and only use custom maps that have the exact same dino's as the current story map you're on. E.g. The Island and The Center. Think of the custom maps as an extension of each map. Like another instance area or expansion. They also help with BP framing because usually CM caves area easier and more accessible to farm with higher chances of Ascendant gear I believe. 

For breeding multiplier, I recommend figuring out how much time you spend playing ark each week, e.g. for me its aboot 4hrs a night weekdays, 8hrs on weekends, for a total of 36hrs. Then look up the Giga breeding time on Dodex. Then you think, "ok, a Giga takes roughly 7 days to breed official". Now figure out what multiplier you're going to need to breed that Giga in 36hrs or 1 week of YOUR gameplay. For me it was aboot 5x breed maturity. Only down side is you can't raise the breeding cuddle multiplier, you can only raise the cuddle interval on Singleplayer. Which means you'll have to cuddle more often. I set mine to 0.2 and cuddles are aboot 1h 45 mins apart which can be annoying.  But at least it will feel like official breeding. Kinda.

One thing I despise aboot Singleplayer is the obvious lack of care from Wildcard which means constant micromanaging. It's so friggin annoying. And official servers are unplayable for me and also unfortunately every unofficial server Cluster in existence is boosted up the wazoo. I just want to play Ark the way it was ment to be played. Other then pvp of course.  I think Ark pvp is boring and stupid.  Hours of endless Siege Machine is friggin boring. And your only reward for winning is more loot you don't need. 

Oh and another thing. Don't listen to them when they tell you start a fresh character every map. That's silly. The point of the game is to finish all the story maps with the same character. If you wish to struggle for dominance on a new map then spawn in the most difficult areas that are the farthest from any Obelisk. And fight, tame, and build your way back home to your previous base to collect your favorite pets(because over the 200+ hrs on The Island, you will become attached to them). Yes it will make every other map easier once you get lvl 115 and have multiple armies, but that's the point, it's not supposed to take 300hrs per map. Enjoy the fruits of your labors.

Sorry just one more thing. I find that making the game more immersive can really up the fun and enjoyment meter to max. Role play yourself into the role of the survivor. Don't do what you know you need to do to accomplish victory over Rockwell. Do what you think you would do if you were put into that position of being a lone survivor waking up in the middle of no where on an alien planet full of dinosaurs, having your previous real life memories intact. Go exploring, find dossiers and notes, let them guide you on what to do as if you have no previous experience within the ARKs. Just a thought. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Seshter said:

Oh and another thing. Don't listen to them when they tell you start a fresh character every map. That's silly. The point of the game is to finish all the story maps with the same character. If you wish to struggle for dominance on a new map then spawn in the most difficult areas that are the farthest from any Obelisk. And fight, tame, and build your way back home to your previous base to collect your favorite pets(because over the 200+ hrs on The Island, you will become attached to them). Yes it will make every other map easier once you get lvl 115 and have multiple armies, but that's the point, it's not supposed to take 300hrs per map. Enjoy the fruits of your labors.

Actually, it IS designed to level from 1 on each map! Otherwise why would those water dinos matter, or those robot guys on Extinction city, etc. If you already have canteens and Ravagers those are totally irrelevant, no more than fun decorations.

Obviously there's a broad spectrum of possible ways to play but remember you're *supposed* to occasionally permanently lose a character (being captured) and therefore start over. Although ofc tribe mates complicate that.

It's personal preference to skip large chunks of progression, but the game clearly supports not :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm sorry but I  disagree. Having a high level character on a new map is an excellent experience of it's own that is overlooked by many people, such as yourself, whom think that your somehow cheating or ripping yourself off of an overly repetitive and grindy experience that is not natural to the natural progression of a  game. Like I said, there are ways to challenge yourself with putting immersive limits and spawning into an impossibly hard zone for a Beach Bob to conquer.

What you're suggesting is a completely different thing that doesn't really follow the Helena Story. I mean you can pretend that you're set back to level 1 sure. But I guarentee that most people will just note run or exp grind to level 70 in less then 3hrs anyway so what's the point? 

You're basically suggesting that someone play each map as if the previous map never existed. Which defeats the point of a storyline imo if you just forget all you've learned in the last 300hrs and restart from scratch.

But as you mentioned. To each their own. OP asked for suggestions. I gave'em one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Wut.

Sure that is true if you're playing a hardcore or permadeath challenge. But tell me where and when on public servers do you naturally lose a character and reset to 1 on any servers that aren't hardcore? And since the majority of servers aren't hardcore, one can assume that's the natural progression of a  Storyline Progression based game, to which I believe that the OP is asking aboot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Volunteer Moderator
4 minutes ago, Seshter said:

Sure that is true if you're playing a hardcore or permadeath challenge. But tell me where and when on public servers do you naturally lose a character and reset to 1 on any servers that aren't hardcore? And since the majority of servers aren't hardcore, one can assume that's the natural progression of a  Storyline Progression based game, to which I believe that the OP is asking aboot.

Why are you asking me this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, Seshter said:

Oh and another thing. Don't listen to them when they tell you start a fresh character every map. That's silly.

It's not "silly", it's a preference. You prefer not to, other people prefer to, the OP can decide what he prefers to do. Everyone plays SP their own way.

5 hours ago, Seshter said:

The point of the game is to finish all the story maps with the same character.

The point of the game is to enjoy playing the game, however you do it. That's what games are for, to enjoy.

You need to think about the fact that the reason the OP started this thread is that he's trying to figure out how to finish all the maps, and more importantly how to enjoy finishing all the maps, with the amount of time that he has available to play. You have your schedule, you have your preferences, you can enjoy the game however you want, and other people can enjoy the game however they want. That's the real point.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/18/2022 at 10:22 AM, Pipinghot said:

It's not "silly", it's a preference. You prefer not to, other people prefer to, the OP can decide what he prefers to do. Everyone plays SP their own way.

The point of the game is to enjoy playing the game, however you do it. That's what games are for, to enjoy.

You need to think about the fact that the reason the OP started this thread is that he's trying to figure out how to finish all the maps, and more importantly how to enjoy finishing all the maps, with the amount of time that he has available to play. You have your schedule, you have your preferences, you can enjoy the game however you want, and other people can enjoy the game however they want. That's the real point.

 

 

 

Sure but the OP's point is that they only have 3 hrs a day to play. I don't think that the OP wants to waste their time restarting on every friggin map.

And yes it is Silly imo. If you aren't playing ARK PVE for the storyline, then you're basically playing dress up with dinosaurs. This is ARK, not The Sims. That's what I find Silly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/18/2022 at 12:03 PM, Griffin998 said:

Exactly! The point of any game is to have fun, not to finish it.

Incorrect. The point of a game is to have fun with it, then finish it, and move on to greater and better things. Possibly coming back to it a couple years later, once you've forgotten most of it. Games aren't supposed to be forever games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/18/2022 at 7:32 AM, Oldster said:

Actually, it IS designed to level from 1 on each map! Otherwise why would those water dinos matter, or those robot guys on Extinction city, etc. If you already have canteens and Ravagers those are totally irrelevant, no more than fun decorations.

Obviously there's a broad spectrum of possible ways to play but remember you're *supposed* to occasionally permanently lose a character (being captured) and therefore start over. Although ofc tribe mates complicate that.

It's personal preference to skip large chunks of progression, but the game clearly supports not :)

I disagree, it's not designed to start ftom level 1 IF you are following the Helena Storyline. Besides, you can still use Morellatops at lvl 115. There's nothing wrong with limiting yourself for the enjoyment of freshie things. Restarting from level 1 is a pointless handicap. Unless you're turning down the exp meter below 0.5, then your going to be level 50 in less then 5 hours anyways. We all know how to abuse this games leveling system because WC made it easy to do so. So even if you start at level 1, you still need to limit yourself on what you use early game, if you want to force yourself to enjoy freshie things like Morellatops. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Change your settings to speed things up.  As a single player with limited time you shouldn't be ashamed to do so. Using official settings is not feasible if you're solo'ing because when you log off the game stops and dino babies will still be babies when you log back on.  Play it your way and find the balance that works for you via settings and mods that have been created with that in mind.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...